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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

A recent issue of Nautilus [nautil.us] has an interesting story about "Nuclear Pasta": What Neutron Stars, Lasagna, and Waffles Have in Common [nautil.us]

Hot fluids of neutrons that flow without friction, superconductors made of protons, and a solid crust built of exotic atoms—features like these make neutron stars some of the strangest objects we’ve found in the cosmos so far. They pack all the mass of a star into a sphere the size of a city, resulting in states of matter we just don’t have on Earth.

And yet, despite their extreme weirdness, neutron stars contain a mishmash of vaguely familiar features, as if seen darkly through a funhouse mirror. One of the weirdest is the fact that deep inside a neutron star you can find a whole menu full of (nuclear) pasta.

The pasta is made of protons and neutrons, held together by the extreme pressures. These oddball nuclei arrange themselves into weird configurations that Matt Caplan of Indiana University and his colleagues call “nuclear pasta.”[1] The pasta layer lies in the inner crust, a transitional zone between a neutron star’s outer crust and core. In the top of this layer, the nuclei form blobs called “gnocchi.” Deeper down, they join together into cylindrical shapes called “spaghetti.” More pressure, and the spaghetti compresses into “lasagna”: flattish sheets of nuclear matter. Then the pasta transitions into “anti-pasta”: The sheets of lasagna form cylindrical hollows where neutrons begin leaking out, which Caplan calls “anti-spaghetti.” And finally, when the pressure is high enough, those hollows break into small bubbles, the “anti-gnocchi” phase.

The Nautilus goes on to explain how the researchers came to these conclusions based on the observation of a variety of neutron stars known as magnetars [wikipedia.org] which, when undergoing a "star quake", cast off vast amounts of gamma rays. I found the article to be very readable and understandable by a lay person.

And now for the age old question: What do you put on your pasta — "sauce" or "gravy"?

References:
[1] Article: Pasta nucleosynthesis: Molecular dynamics simulations of nuclear statistical equilibrium. [arxiv.org] (pdf)
[2] Abstract: Nuclear Waffles (http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2551) [arxiv.org] and full article (pdf) [arxiv.org]
[3] Abstract: Magnetically driven crustquakes in neutron stars. [oup.com]

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